Is It Time to Start Skip Counting?

Helping your child learn to skip count can be confusing for parents. When should children learn to skip count? Should they start with 2s? 5s? 10s? What’s the best way to help them? In this post, I’ll address how you know when your child is ready to start skip counting and address the best ways to practice skip counting in my next post.

Is my child ready to skip count?

Counting by 10s is typically part of kindergarten curriculum. Because all children are different, your child may be ready earlier or later than that. There are generally two things your child should be able to do BEFORE they’re ready to start counting by 10s:

1. Accurately count a group of (at least) 50 objects by 1s.

2. Recognize and describe the pattern of repeating ones within each new 10 (that is, after we say 20, we start back at 1 with 21 then 22, 23, 24 and this happens at each new ten)

To support the development of these skills, we love this Unifix Cubes puzzle (Duplo blocks or Legos would work too).

To Make the Puzzle:

1. Label the blocks with numbers (one color per set of 10)

2. Scramble up the blocks

3. Let your child put them back together

Over time, your child will start to see the pattern of repeated ones within each new set of 10. Talking about this pattern with your child will help them prepare to skip count by 10s.

If your child has already mastered the two prerequisite skills listed above, then you can start building the skill set of counting by 10s with the concrete process outlined here. This process will help your child build understanding of what they’re counting rather than just memorizing a sequence of numbers that don’t hold any meaning.